Despite my best efforts, this account continues to bother me. It has waned a bit but I still get the occasional bout of existential dread considering what I had seen in this account. If you guys have any experiences you could share dealing with accounts like this, please share 
.
LOL
The irony is that in order to arrive at the conclusion that “Christianity despises critical thinking and empirical testing” one must abandon critical thinking.
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- Max, I think you’re identifying the wrong problem.
- The issue is no longer the specific X account. The deeper issue is what you are allowing provocative online content to do to your mind and emotional state.
- Right now, a hostile or dismissive internet comment appears capable of affecting:
- your emotional stability,
- your sense of existential security,
- your anxiety levels,
- your peace of mind,
- your attention,
- and your ability to disengage from intrusive thoughts.
- That is too much power to hand over to random people on the internet. The modern internet contains an effectively endless supply of:
- confident voices,
- mockery,
- slogans,
- bad arguments,
- exaggerations,
- tribal rhetoric,
- and emotionally provocative content.
- If every inflammatory statement is treated as a potential existential emergency, you will never get psychological rest.
- Intellectual maturity is not merely learning apologetics or collecting arguments. It also includes:
- developing filters,
- learning emotional boundaries,
- distinguishing anxiety from evidence,
- recognizing provocation tactics,
- and knowing when not to engage.
- A random online account should not be able to destabilize your worldview every time you encounter it. And frankly, if online exposure repeatedly produces spirals of existential dread, obsessive revisiting, reassurance-seeking, and emotional exhaustion, then it seems obvious to me that reducing exposure may be wiser than continuing to immerse yourself in the same cycle.
- The internet is not a psychologically neutral environment. Much of it is engineered to capture attention through outrage, fear, certainty, conflict, and emotional activation.
- At some point you have to decide:
- “Am I evaluating ideas calmly and rationally, or am I allowing emotionally provocative strangers online to repeatedly hijack my nervous system?”
- Those are not the same thing.
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Max, my question would be: Why does that post bother you?
The only reason I can think of is that you’re concerned the claim (Christianity despises critical thinking) might be true. But surely you know that’s nonsense. You yourself disprove it with every thoughtful conversation you have on this very website. So why?
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I actually took the time to look at the transcript of the referenced YT video. I’m shocked by the weakness of the arguments put forward, I was expecting something a lot better (worse? depends how you look at it). There’s just no substance, the video relies purely on inflammatory rhetoric, it literally starts by telling the audience how offensive it’s going to be (!!!).
All it seems to be doing is giving extreme interpretation of biblical verses. So suddenly telling people to be like children means you have to be stupid (!!!). Children aren’t stupid, so that immediately invalidates it.
Another example “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” becomes: “Your brain is the enemy. Stop using it.” So if you ever trusted anyone, then you must be stupid then?
And of course there’s the classic “intelligent people are less likely to be religious”. Max, I know that you have done some research on this one recently so that you know this argument is overblown.
From the video description:
“Oh, and for those ready to argue, I already checked. There isn’t a single verse in the Bible that unconditionally supports free thought or unrestricted pursuit of knowledge”
He clearly didn’t look very hard:
Proverbs 4:7 “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”
Proverbs 18:15 “The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.”
I appreciate this video isn’t by T Grogan, but by another content creator. But since he posted link to it on his account, it clearly means he endorses it. And it really is terrible, not because I disagree with it, but because of it’s quality. If someone reads compassion for the humble and hears “God loves idiots,” that says a lot about them, not God.
So this is how you deal with such accounts: once you realise these people are low quality, you simply stop paying them any attention. Would you pay attention to someone IRL if you knew they have nothing intelligent to say?
I appreciate it is hard to know how to distinguish things without much experience. So here’s a quick rule of the thumb: anyone who starts by telling you how offensive they are going to be…you can turn it off right there.
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Absolutely. Outrage gets clicks and comments, and that rewards the author.
To a large degree, a lot of internet content resolves down to the equivalent of toddlers screaming “Look at MEEE!” – to which the best response tends to be to ignore them.
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Conversely, the producer of the video relied on his own understanding and made a bunch of really bad arguments. The Bible is definitely accurate in saying that we shouldn’t uncritically trust what we think. Humans are not omniscient, make mistakes, and have biases.
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Don’t forget this verse of mine: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” Proverbs 25:2
What is it that you exactly SEE in this account?
What I see is, first, a ridiculous cartoon character who suddenly makes an assertion – but without much on which to back it up.
This is followed by a quote from Huxley which seems similarly out of context…
…and then another quote out of context making a faith-based (negative faith) assertion based on not much.
I might pass up responding to an account like this because it is “trying to look hip without much to support it.”
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What you miss by focusing on T_Grogan’s X introduction is the joy of actually watching the introduction to the Youtube he refers to: Why God Prefers the Ignorant (Explained).
- 00:00 to 00:29.
Chapter 1: Start
0:01 [Music]
Chapter 2: Disclaimer
0:05 The following program is designed to offend provoke and challenge your religious sensibilities it contains content that will likely offend anyone who holds religion sacred. This is for those with thick skin or a taste for the harsh truth. If you’re easily offended or cherish your religious views please turn off now. Viewer discretion is strongly advised you have been warned."
- Needless to say, T_Grogan doesn’t tell you about the Youtube’s disclaimer.
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But thank you tons for this! It really helps me see clearly that this account isn’t as universally true as I had once thought.
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Max what I see here is what I’ve heard from online atheists for a long time: that because science is such a great approach for empirical matters we can/should dismiss anything which science can’t affirm, whether it it has to do with empirical matters or not.
No need to reject matters of the heart or anything to do with the sacred just because what works for the empirical can’t affirm it.
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